Organise your digital photos

We all get snap happy during the holiday season. However, if you want to find those photos once they're downloaded from your camera, keep things organised from the start.

Most digital cameras download to a default location such as My Pictures, which is great as it keeps all your photos in one place.

However, they will either just store your photos by number and date or create a new folder each time you download with the current date.

To stand half a chance of locating your photos in the future, give the folders meaningful names at the outset. "Thailand Holiday- Jan 2009" is good, "29-01-09" is not.

Part of the fun of photos is sharing them with family and friends and that's where online photo albums come in.

One of the most established sites is flickr.com. It takes a couple of minutes to set up a free account which allows you to upload up to 100MB of photos a month and two video files up to 90 seconds long.

Uploading images is simple and you can share them by selecting the photo and then clicking on the "Share This" icon on the top right of the screen.

Flickr is also heavy on the organising features for photos. You can drag and drop them into sets and tag them with keywords so you can search on them at a later date.

Serious photographers may consider upgrading to a FlickrPro account, which offers unlimited uploads and unlimited storage for about NZ$35 annually.

Many photo-sharing sites on the web focus heavily on selling you prints/mousepads/calendars of your uploaded pictures.

Nothing wrong with that, we all need to earn a living. I've been trying out myphotoalbum.com, which allows you to create various photo albums to group your pictures.

Tabs along the top of your personal homepage make navigation easy and options are clearly signposted, so if you've never done this before, you really can't go that wrong. Uploading is simple and you can select and upload multiple photos at once.

You can also play around with your albums, changing the frames, colour themes and display options or rearranging the photo order with a simple drag and drop. You share an album by entering the email address of your contact, they receive a link and can flick through your pictures.

My Photo Album offers free accounts, but they do require you to keep your account in "good standing" by using one of their services at some point during the year, for instance buy some prints/ mugs/mousepads or pay for the storage service (about NZ$30 a year).

Other sharing sites worth checking out are photobucket.com and snapfish.co.nz. Choose one that fits your particular needs. Flickr might have a whole host of features that are fantastic for the keen photographer. However, if you just want to share your holiday photo album with your parents then a simple site such as My Photo Album is more user- friendly.

- © Fairfax NZ News